The list goes on and on, but if one thing has become clear, it’s that potential uses for the tiny Linux machine are limited only by the bounds of the human imagination.

‘Useful and Innovative’

“The Raspberry Pi is interesting and exciting for a couple of reasons,” Jay Lyman, a senior analyst with 451 Research, told Linux.com.

“First, it demonstrates how useful and innovative Linux and open source software still are today, particularly in educational situations,” Lyman explained. “Linux and open source software make sense economically, since it is free or–in the case of Raspberry Pi, relatively inexpensive–to acquire and use the technology.

“Linux and open source software also make sense educationally since source code can be accessed, viewed, and used by teachers and students,” he added.

Finally, “the Raspberry Pi device and community are also indicative of the ongoing effort to leverage Linux and open source software to bring meaningful, low-power, and low-cost computing and computer science to the masses, and particularly to students in less-advantaged geographies where they might not otherwise have that opportunity.”

‘We Believe We Can Be a Catalyst’

Will this inspiring Linux device succeed in closing the Digital Divide, where so many other efforts have failed? Only time will tell.

More than 700,000 Raspberry Pi boards have been sold since their launch in February, according to a recent TechRepublic report that also offers a glimpse inside a UK Raspberry Pi factory responsible for producing some 3,000 of the devices each day. Starting in January, production there is reportedly slated to ramp up to 4,000 boards daily.

All this from a little project to improve computer-science education.

“We don’t claim to have all the answers,” explains the Raspberry Pi Foundation on the project website. “We don’t think that the Raspberry Pi is a fix to all of the world’s computing issues; we do believe that we can be a catalyst.

“We want to break the paradigm where without spending hundreds of pounds on a PC, families can’t use the internet,” the project team adds. “We want owning a truly personal computer to be normal for children.”

The foundation added that it expected 2012 to be “a very exciting year,” and it certainly seems safe to say it was right.